As is the way with marketing bandwaggons, the term data mining has now been appropriated by just about anybody with any kind of data analysis tool, no matter how basic. Many of the more specialist data mining tools remain largely unknown in the general marketplace. But three data miners that have now begun to make a mark, attracting deals with some of the larger players in the industry, are Angoss Software Inc, Information Discovery Inc and MicroStrategy Inc. Angoss has recently signed a deal with Cognos Software Inc that will see its KnowlegeSeeker software embedded into PowerPlay and Impromptu. The Canadian company, based in Markham, Ontario, has also signed a worldwide distribution agreement with Tandem Computers Inc. KnowledgeSeeker uses artificial intelligence techniques for data analysis and prediction, and runs on MS-DOS, Windows and Unix. A multiprocessor version is due out later this year. Information Discovery Inc, of Torrance, California, said its Information Discovery System, IDIS, will view data automatically, form hypotheses, and test them over and over again until hard rules emerge. These can then be used for decision support and predictive models. The program runs on Windows personal computers, Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp Unixes, and Unisys Corp is now recommending it as one of the decision support tools for its recently launched Opus parallel server. A more formal marketing agreement to be signed shortly. And MicroStrategy, from Vienna, Virginia, has signed an alliance with Software AG. Its DSS Agent software will be bundled in with Software AG’s Esperant SQL-based query and reporting tool.
